Leadville – Riveted

Aerial Shots from This Morning’s Hexacopter Flight

Laura Domela — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 16:47:45 +0000

Black dot at the clearing where the roads meet is us. (Click images to enlarge)

Looking toward our campground (light spot at the base of the trees toward the top of the picture, below Mt. Elbert):

Arkansas River:

Hexacopter in a Thunderstorm

Laura Domela — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:28:00 +0000

Okay not really. Maybe "near" a thunderstorm.

We got back from Cowboy Mounted Shooting in time for another dramatic thunderstorm. It was loud but short, and resulted in a pretty double rainbow:

After the rain stopped, we took the hexacopter out and Kevin flew a few batteries' worth. We found a county road not that far from the campground that ran between some train tracks and the Arkansas River. (Hexacopter/dot in upper right corner of photo below):

It was beautiful out, and I think he got some great footage. While he was flying, I took this photo of the storm cloud next to us. (It was moving away, luckily, but look how cool!)

Farmers Market, Tabor Opera House, and Cowboy Mounted Shooting

Laura Domela — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 22:05:13 +0000

This morning we headed into town to check out the last Saturday Farmers Market of the summer. It was quite small, but we picked up some nice tomatoes, jalapenos, garlic, and a box of raspberries.

We put our produce in the car and went to check out the self-guided tour of the Tabor Opera House.

From their website: "The Tabor Opera House was built in 1879 by Horace Austin Warner Tabor, one of Colorado's most well known mining magnates. It was one of the most costly and most substantially-built structures in Colorado history."

We got to wander through the place at our leisure after watching an interesting short video about the theater's history.

Much more information about the Tabor Opera House, its history, and renovation is here on their website.

On the way to town from our campground for the past couple of days we'd been noticing an accumulation of horse trailers over at the Lake County Fairgrounds. This morning when we drove past there were a bunch of horses in the arena and what looked like the setup for some cowboy mounted shooting. (!!!) We headed there next and sure enough, it was our lucky day. We hung out for a couple hours watching the shoot and it was a blast…such an exciting sport to watch. I took a bunch of photos…here are a few of my favorite ones:

This is Kevin Perry (I know because while I was researching the event, I found him on the Colorado Mounted Thunder website):

Kevin's horse kept nuzzling and nudging his arm while he was trying to reload.

It was such a fun time. There's more tomorrow so we may go back.

We headed back to the Pastime Saloon for a beer and some hot wings for a late lunch and this time Jerry (the owner) waited on us. She's been tending bar at the Pastime for 36 years this October 1st and she was super sweet. She greeted us with "Have you been in before?" and I said yes, we'd actually been in last night. She said "I thought I recognized you! I think I waited on you. Nice to have you back." (She didn't wait on us…I never saw her before, and I heard her say the same thing to other customers). So sweet though…she was wonderful. There are two large oval portraits above the liquor bottles behind the bar: one is of her husband and the other is of her (both taken many years ago). They're lovely. (The burgers last night were better than the wings today, but it was all still good.)

Oh yeah, here's a little video Kevin took at the shoot today:

Now we're sipping a martini with three olives, Kevin's got a pork tenderloin on the Traeger, the storm has passed and it's a gorgeous evening. Happy Saturday everyone!

Bordellos and Burgers in Leadville

Laura Domela — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 12:02:14 +0000

We've been enjoying this area for the past couple days, but mostly we've been working and not taking very many photos. Here's downtown Leadville taken with my iPhone while driving.

Last night we met some new friends/blog readers Debbie and Glen. They just bought their first Airstream and had a few questions for us. We met at our Airstream and chatted a bit over a beer, then headed over to the Pastime Bar on 2nd Street for burgers and fries.

This place is a real gem. The saloon was founded in 1878. Originally it was the Oro City Chinese bar and was Leadville's official bordello and has (of course) a pretty racy history. It's now a full bar and serves really good burgers and fries (and chicken wings, but we didn't have any of those). Kevin and I both had the jalapeno burger and it was great. I think we should go back and have a drink at the bar sometime while we're here.

So far our spot here at Sugar Loafin' has been wonderful. Great views of the mountains, dramatic afternoon thunderstorms, beautiful sunny days. We haven't had neighbors in either spot directly next to us until last night. At about 11pm we heard an awful lot of noise outside and I peeked out the window and saw a truck with a trailer trying to back in to the next spot. There were about five men with flashlights all talking to each other at full volume while the diesel rattled away. Our tiki torches were flickering nicely while the mayhem beyond them looked like longshoremen offloading a container ship in the middle of the night. Stabilizers, hookups, and slideouts, oh my.

Road Pics from the Drive to Leadville

Laura Domela — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 00:57:23 +0000

What a gorgeous drive today from Mueller State Park to Leadville. We drove past four (I think) of the Fourteeners…the mountains in Colorado over 14,000 feet. The tallest mountain is Mt. Elbert, at 14,439ft. (Colorado has 53 mountains that qualify as Fourteeners!)

We'd both been a little bummed not to be staying at Turquoise Lake where we've stayed both times we've been here before, but they didn't take reservations and since this weekend is Labor Day weekend we thought we should find a place we could secure. We got a reservation at Sugar Loafin Campground about 4 miles from the center of Leadville amd about a mile from Turquoise Lake. We both thought it was going to be one of those commercial RV Park parking lots, but it's not. Not at all. We have a gorgeous spot with a great view. It's fabulous. We got a nice dramatic thunderstorm and some rain this afternoon, then headed into Leadville for some dinner at High Mountain Pies (pizza…very good pizza, and salad). We walked around town a bit and came back to the Airstream for the evening.

Tomorrow after work's done we'll head back into town and wander through some shops. I think the last time we were here was the first year we had our first Airstream, so — 2005. It's nice to be back.

This is our spot: number 44.